Adjunct faculty: second-class citizens

I’m also a former adjunct college instructor, and experienced the same frustrations: inadequate pay, no benefits or job security, the necessity of holding other jobs to make ends meet, contemptuous treatment by tenured faculty, etc.

But unlike Johnson, I gave up after only three years, when I saw the trend toward staffing most community college faculty positions with part-timers. I have had only production-blue collar employment the past 20 years, which at least provided security and benefits.

What a shame when you spend, say, seven years of your life earning a bachelor’s degree and an master’s (or more for a Ph.D.) only to find yourself treated little different from a seasonal worker by institutions purportedly pro-labor and committed to “progressive” political ideals.

Harley C. Jamieson

Oceanside

Will take fields over shopping centers

Someone, tell me I’m not the only one whose heart breaks a little more each time I read or hear things like the last paragraph of a letter May 2 titled “Arizona stadium did well at redevelopment.”

What was described sounded more like “development” than “redevelopment.” My argument is not that certain things don’t encourage a climate of either, it’s that so many Americans don’t even question whether views of cows and cotton fields just might be a whole lot more beneficial than views of shopping centers for miles.

Shari Hogan

Point Loma

Cartoon captures Nigerian response

Steve Breen was right on target May 7 with his cartoon so aptly highlighting the lackadaisical response of the Nigerian government to the heinous crime of the kidnapped schoolgirls by depicting a “Nigerian Search & Rescue” truck parked outside a doughnut shop.